I'm far from an expert on this topic. But it seems to me that this article is criticising the history of the tragedy of the commons, and extending that criticism (with insufficient justification,...
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I'm far from an expert on this topic. But it seems to me that this article is criticising the history of the tragedy of the commons, and extending that criticism (with insufficient justification, in my opinion) to the correctness of the concept, and then making policy recommendations on that basis.
Apparently the person who popularised the concept was a white nationalist eugenicist, and the history of the "shared pastures" metaphor was rooted in oppression. That's all definitely bad. But I don't see how this rebuts what I think is the core claim of the tragedy of the commons: that when incentives are structured in a way that allows large negative externalities, each individual is incentivised to act in a way such that the collective is worse off.
The article claims that Elinor Ostrom debunks the tragedy of the commons. Her Nobel Prize-winning work studied local communities which had developed their own system for managing the commons. From another article linked by the Jacobin article:
The features of successful systems, Ostrom and her colleagues found, include clear boundaries (the ‘community’ doing the managing must be well-defined); reliable monitoring of the shared resource; a reasonable balance of costs and benefits for participants; a predictable process for the fast and fair resolution of conflicts; an escalating series of punishments for cheaters; and good relationships between the community and other layers of authority, from household heads to international institutions.
This reads to me as proposing a different incentive structure which correctly aligns individual and collective interests, which is not so much a rebuttal of the tragedy of the commons as a rebuttal of the specific claim that "privatisation is the only solution to the tragedy".
Furthermore, it's not clear to me that Ostrom's incentive structure can be applied to the "loss of our groundwater, clean air, wetlands, and forests". I don't see many of her features (from the quote above) applying to these. To me, it seems that the tragedy of the commons is fully at play in these cases.
More subjectively, it feels to me that this article is a reaction to conservatives using the tragedy of the commons to "[assert] that we all share blame for warming the planet" (and therefore that corporations deserve no blame), and the claim that "[i]nevitability excuses us from struggle" (and therefore that climate action is unnecessary). To be clear, I disagree with conservatives that the tragedy of the commons implies either of these things.
But the Jacobin article's particular reaction seems to be to throw out the whole concept of the "tragedy of the commons" along with the bathwater. This seems sad to me, because I think that the concept correctly models climate change: any solution to the climate crisis must align individual incentives and the the collective interest, if it wants to last any amount of time. Carbon credits and ESG seem to be baby steps in that direction, although they have their own problems.
Without aligning incentives, I don't think it matters how many Shell CEOs you eat, because another one will just step up to the plate.
On a side note, I found myself a little disturbed by the reporting in this article. I had not heard of Garrett Hardin before this article, but I read about him while doing my due diligence into...
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On a side note, I found myself a little disturbed by the reporting in this article.
I had not heard of Garrett Hardin before this article, but I read about him while doing my due diligence into it. Regarding Hardin's death, the Jacobin article writes:
Inevitability excuses us from struggle. (Hardin and his wife killed themselves in 2003, citing their desire to create more room on Spaceship Earth.)
I found the above description an unnecessary and frankly cruel jab at his death, considering the real circumstances seem to be that he was 88 years old and in poor health, while his wife was 81 with ALS, and their deaths were in keeping with their belief in assisted suicide.
Furthermore, it seems that reducing him to a "eugenicist and white nationalist" with a "very specific political agenda" is at least somewhat misleading, because:
He and his wife were longtime supporters of Planned Parenthood, and in 1973 helped operate an "underground railroad" in which 200 local women went to Mexico seeking abortions.
Between the article's reductive take on Hardin, and its claims that the tragedy of the commons is "vociferously refuted", "discredited", and a "myth" (which I disagree with, as explained above), I can't say that this article gave me a lot of confidence in the reporting by this author or by Jacobin.
Eugenicists are not intrinsically anti-abortion. If you are in favor of population-control and anti-immigration in the USA, you are at least a bit of a white supremacist....Especially back in his...
Eugenicists are not intrinsically anti-abortion.
If you are in favor of population-control and anti-immigration in the USA, you are at least a bit of a white supremacist....Especially back in his formative years where the population was much whiter than it is today.
You're saying the white-dominant society has the right to remain wealthier, and that keeping out "undesirables" is a valid way to do that.
That seems reasonable, although I also don't remember seeing anything suggesting he held anything like the more extreme forms of white nationalism that seems unfortunately common today. Maybe I...
That seems reasonable, although I also don't remember seeing anything suggesting he held anything like the more extreme forms of white nationalism that seems unfortunately common today.
Maybe I should have been clearer though --- I am aware that Hardin held some beliefs that I disagree with today. My specific issue is that the article originally left me with the impression that Hardin was some kind of delusional hard-right nutjob whom I should disagree with about everything. So, when I later found out that the reality seemed much more nuanced, I felt manipulated and lied to.
Minor note: I feel a bit uncomfortable seeing the third-person pronoun "you" being used in your comment in relation to beliefs which I do not hold.
I know the "you" thing is problematic conversationally, but it is really hard to force myself to always use the abstracted "one" all the time because it makes sentences flow even more confusingly IMO.
I know the "you" thing is problematic conversationally, but it is really hard to force myself to always use the abstracted "one" all the time because it makes sentences flow even more confusingly IMO.
That's fair, and I agree there's no perfect solution for this. It's also not my place to prescribe what words anyone should or should not use. But I personally try to use something more like "If a...
That's fair, and I agree there's no perfect solution for this. It's also not my place to prescribe what words anyone should or should not use. But I personally try to use something more like "If a person... then they..." and "That would be saying..."
I try to stick to more neutral language especially when talking about sensitive or political issues, where people seem to more readily take things personally.
This "you" problem feels like a glitch in English. Using "you" as a third person pronoun just sounds better to my ears. I use it constantly in writing and 99% of the time it's not in reference to...
This "you" problem feels like a glitch in English. Using "you" as a third person pronoun just sounds better to my ears. I use it constantly in writing and 99% of the time it's not in reference to actual positions of the person I'm talking to but rather as a way to set the table for whatever argument I'm aiming for.
The problem is a large number of people are fundamentally incapable of receiving it in the way you are intending and respond as though they are being personally attacked.
The problem is a large number of people are fundamentally incapable of receiving it in the way you are intending and respond as though they are being personally attacked.
There was a reason I threw the qualifier "In the USA." Racism is especially bad here. Like many criminal statues, almost all immigration controls in the USA have severely racist over or...
There was a reason I threw the qualifier "In the USA." Racism is especially bad here. Like many criminal statues, almost all immigration controls in the USA have severely racist over or undertones, depending on the year it was passed. Naturalization for whites only. Rejecting undesirables, where that meant Asians. That slowly shifted focus to Muslims and Hispanics in my lifetime. "Secure the Border" is code for "Keep the Mexicans out."
Substitute racist with classist and the arguement translates worldwide with little problem. The only reason to restrict immigration is because you don't want others to have access to what you have. And thats pretty damn supremacist now matter the race.
That’s a bit reductionist, isn’t it? I’m pretty pro-immigration, and I’m strongly anti-nationalist, but even I can see that absolutely unlimited immigration policies would be problematic.
The only reason to restrict immigration is because you don't want others to have access to what you have. And thats pretty damn supremacist now matter the race.
That’s a bit reductionist, isn’t it? I’m pretty pro-immigration, and I’m strongly anti-nationalist, but even I can see that absolutely unlimited immigration policies would be problematic.
Howso? I'd agree that perhaps going from today's status quo to nothing instantly would be a problem. The same way that hitting a small website with a million requests at once can. But gradually...
Howso? I'd agree that perhaps going from today's status quo to nothing instantly would be a problem. The same way that hitting a small website with a million requests at once can.
But gradually phasing out limits over the course of 10-20 years? There's no reason that couldn't be easily achieved. And once the limits are no longer in place, mass migration is unlikely to be a thing outside of emergencies. Which is kind of the most important time to facilitate it.
The USA is a defacto group of 50 countries with open borders between them. And you don't hear too many stories about Kansas being overrun with people fleeing California en mass.
I and many friends would probably emmigrate to Europe if it was as easy as moving between states, which basically just involves giving proof of residence and turning in your old ID for new ID. And I'm sure plenty of Europeans would love to do the reverse (ok maybe not since 2016 but you know).
The issue as I see it is there are pretty widely varying ideas of how a society should operate, and my ideas are not necessarily dominant in the rest of the world....
The issue as I see it is there are pretty widely varying ideas of how a society should operate, and my ideas are not necessarily dominant in the rest of the world.
Even military rule had its supporters. A median of 24% said “a system in which the military rules the country” would be a very or somewhat good system. In five countries – Vietnam, Indonesia, India, South Africa and Nigeria – roughly half or more expressed this opinion, as did at least 40% in another six nations.
I would be comfortable living in any of some 50-60 countries in the world. I would not even entertain the idea of living in most of the others, where the prevailing ideas about at least one of gender equality, tolerance of religion, democracy, and LGBT-acceptance are intolerably poor.
Correspondingly, I would not like my home to dramatically shift to become more similar to any of those regions where I would not choose to live.
Despite what we perceive as differences between the cultures of Kansas and California, ultimately they are almost indistinguishable compared to, for instance, the Middle East or most of Asia.
I’m skeptical that our current immigration levels constitute a threat to democracy here in Canada, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think there isn’t some upper bound where our small population of 37 million people couldn’t be completely subsumed by the global average, and currently I see the global average as being fairly bad judging by the world value survey.
Edit: you edited your comment to talk about allowing unlimited migration between Europe and (I assume) America. Those are highly similar western democracies — is that what you mean by unlimited migration, rather than the entire world?
Nope, entire world. Democracy would sort these problems out eventually. I'm seriously doubting people are going to up and abandon their homes, friends, and family unless they're immensely...
Nope, entire world. Democracy would sort these problems out eventually.
I'm seriously doubting people are going to up and abandon their homes, friends, and family unless they're immensely dissatisified with the regieme they're under. Which to me says they'd be less likely to copy the policies of their old home.
If you're LGBT living in America, are you going to emmigrate to Alabama, even though you can? Are Alabamins chomping at the bit to move to New Jersey and displace the libs?
If half of LA democrats up and moved to Wyoming, they could flip the state blue. Why haven't they? It would certainly be in their best interest to override the local culture there.
No, because it's preposterous to presume everyone whom wants to make everywhere like their homeland will leave their homeland.
Canada admits new permanent residents under four main categories. In 2021, 62 percent of immigrants were admitted through economic pathways, 20 percent through family sponsorship, 15 percent as protected persons and refugees, and 3 percent for humanitarian or other reasons.
Well. In the USA, my parents were born at a time (the 1960s) when when the official policy of the US government was to deny government-backed loans to black people. A good bit of the racial wealth...
Well. In the USA, my parents were born at a time (the 1960s) when when the official policy of the US government was to deny government-backed loans to black people.
A good bit of the racial wealth gap in the USA is due in part to these policies. You can see where the lines were drawn to this day by walking the neighborhoods.
I'm aware of religious-based caste systems else where. And there's plenty of that going around in the USA as well. There's a very large contingent of people whom think disbelief in God should be grounds for banning from public office.
Here's a video of one of our congresswoman joking about a muslim congresswoman being a suicide bomber. Here's an incomplete list of anti-black sentiments on one of the largest news networks in the...
This is anecdotal so take it with a grain of salt. I'm also going to post a second piece with context as a top level comment because I think it gives the same message as the Jacobin piece with a...
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This is anecdotal so take it with a grain of salt. I'm also going to post a second piece with context as a top level comment because I think it gives the same message as the Jacobin piece with a less aggressive writing style. Also, for context I'm a white man and this is about to be a long comment.
I first read tragedy of the commons as part of my masters in Coastal Science and Policy. It was the first paper assigned in a class of Social Ecological Systems. I went home and read the paper, which is honestly quite short if anyone is interested, and fell in love with the succinct concept. I returned to class the following day to discuss all of the merits I found with it. I am so happy I wasn't chosen to kick off the discussion because everyone else had found the article sexist, racist and generally not worth the paper it was printed on. No one had been prompted to read it that way, we hadn't had any context we were just given the article. We were a diverse cohort from 8 countries and a fair spread of men and women. I was floored.
The general consensus was it was racist because it undermined and infantilized indigenous/local communities who had by and large managed their resources adequately. It's an easy way to call for external governance of localized resources even though that tends to have been the source of the issue (i.e. depletion of fish stocks usually followed the arrival of national or international level commercial fishing operations, not community level or artisanal ones.). This gets into ideas like "The Brazilian's can't adequately preserve their rainforest so we must go in and manage it for them" or better yet, turn first nation land in British Colombia into federal leases and give Canfor Corp control of the forests.
I originally didn't give this much credence and still thought the article had merits. A week later we attended a presentation by the Chief Scientist of the Nature Conservancy, who at the time was Hugh Possingham, which was held at the university and was open to the public. A number of times audience members from the community would claim that the biggest threat to nature was in fact the impending population boom in Africa and how that would take up our resources and ruin our planet. In response, Hugh lauded the birth control programs the Nature Conservancy had deployed across the continent. To this one of the students from our program stood up and admonished the racist statement. She said that Africa's impact on the climate crisis is next to nothing (current numbers state that while comprising about 17 percent of the world's population, Africa contributes just 4 percent of global carbon emissions) and that it was an easy, racist scapegoat against actual change here. That was a solid point. While it was predicated on thinking like Hardin's, the statement didn't hold much water. While I still struggled to see how tragedy of the commons was racist, that was a decent example.
I also didn't understand how it was sexist. A big part of the discussion we had in class was on reproductive rights. This was justification for limiting the reproductive rights of women, similar to what was rolled out in China in the 80/90s. They also argued for the intersection with gender roles and placing the burden of resource management on women. Now please grant me some grace as it's been nearly 7 years since I had those discussions so not everything is so crisp, but I will say that I came away pretty convinced.
I was wrestling with all of this so much that when Tragedy of the Commons came up organically 2 years later with a friend I really respected and looked up to I asked him why many folks saw it this way. His response was equally shocking. He had actually written a book called "License to Breed" though he had never published it out of fear for reprisal. He loved Hardin's ideas and took it a step further saying you should only be able to procreate after meeting preset monetary, education, and physical requirements. "Oh no," I thought "That sounds a lot like eugenics". A very awkward conversation proceeded and honestly that was the discussion that finally convinced me that Tragedy of the Commons is a justification of ideas like eugenics and supremacy, not the authors beliefs.
So this is a very round about way of saying I understand that the theory as an idea seems sound, but if you start looking at how it's applied and the outcomes of its message it get problematic pretty quickly. It took a long personal journey to get to that conclusion but I did arrive to a place similar to the author of the Jacobin piece.
You know, I'm always reminded of this very recent article about how fucked we are because even judges are doing this: I've been in Australia long enough to know that white collar crimes here are...
Without aligning incentives, I don't think it matters how many Shell CEOs you eat, because another one will just step up to the plate.
But Judge George Georgiou fell somewhere in the middle in his judgement, ruling "the destruction of the native vegetation, and carrying out of the works on the land was, in my opinion, a commercially-based decision".
He went on to say while that work was done to prepare for development on the site, "I am not able to find, beyond reasonable doubt, that the appellants deliberately engaged in the conduct without council permission as the calculated cost of doing business".
There are no incentives but that of money. No self-interest like that of NIMBY (Not In My Backyard). And no one in a powerful position but crooked kings and judges as described in The Book.
Marx is an eugenicist? Because I'm pretty sure I read about it in his book. And that would presumably predate Hardin. Nevermind that I'm pretty sure that is an argument for placing the concept in...
Apparently the person who popularised the concept was a white nationalist eugenicist, and the history of the "shared pastures" metaphor was rooted in oppression.
Marx is an eugenicist? Because I'm pretty sure I read about it in his book. And that would presumably predate Hardin. Nevermind that I'm pretty sure that is an argument for placing the concept in the political left.
The environment is like a perfect example of a tragedy of the commons. No one person, company or country, noticeably benefits from reducing their own pollution output. Everyone else will continue...
The environment is like a perfect example of a tragedy of the commons. No one person, company or country, noticeably benefits from reducing their own pollution output. Everyone else will continue polluting and our sole actor will probably suffer loss of profit, time or energy.
I'm not even sure how that's a right wing concept since the message becomes that shared resources need rules or agreements in place to prevent them from being abused.
While I agree with the Jacobin article, I'm not sure I would if I didn't have a larger context on the Hardin debate, particularly in regards to the climate crisis. I suggest folks that are upset...
While I agree with the Jacobin article, I'm not sure I would if I didn't have a larger context on the Hardin debate, particularly in regards to the climate crisis. I suggest folks that are upset by this article read Brett Frischmann's piece from Scientific American "The Tragedy of the Commons, Revisited", and if that speaks to you, learn more about Elinor Ostrom and her Social-Ecological Systems. I still have a number of her papers and
Key take aways:
...Hardin blurred the idea of a resource system (the pasture) with resource governance (open access), and at the same time, confused open access (no constraints) with commons (sharing among community members on terms set by the community). As a result, he significantly underestimated the power of commons as a form of governance.
Elinor Ostrom and colleagues around the world engaged in rigorous, interdisciplinary social science to diagnose social dilemmas and understand commons as a mode of governing access to and use of shared resources. ...Her approach stressed context and was grounded in empirical study, not ideology. Studies of real communities demonstrated that commons governance works in some contexts and fails in others (Ostrom 1990; Ostrom 2005). Communities may develop their own governance institutions, but communities still are embedded in government and market systems.
Happy to share more on Ostrom if anyone is interested. I still have the PDFs of a number of her works.
Huh. This line alone fundamentally changes my understanding of the term - as a layman I’ve always heard it used as pretty much just a shorthand for the situation where everyone’s rational self...
confused open access (no constraints) with commons (sharing among community members on terms set by the community)
Huh. This line alone fundamentally changes my understanding of the term - as a layman I’ve always heard it used as pretty much just a shorthand for the situation where everyone’s rational self interest causes a system as a whole to collapse, not at all in the context of a specific sociological paper and certainly not as something that hinged on a formal definition of “commons”.
Honestly I think the general understanding of the term may well be so blurred as to undermine the original meaning, because I’d expect the vast majority of people who hear or use it to be thinking of what’s described as open access there, rather than specifically thinking of that form of community governance and/or referencing the particular academic study that the phrase originated from. I don’t really know if there’s anything we can or should do in light of that gap in understanding, but it does at least seem useful to acknowledge.
Yeah, now I know about "the commons", but as a child, it was primarily a phrase used in this precise context. And the way kids smush things together in their heads, it formed some amalgam of...
Yeah, now I know about "the commons", but as a child, it was primarily a phrase used in this precise context. And the way kids smush things together in their heads, it formed some amalgam of "common interests" overlaid the ideal public space, and became about the first ideas of coordination itself. As in, "the tragedy of the commons" is when nobody takes the time to ask "hey, did you want that?" before trodding on it, and that it's a sort of dynamic system of social failure, not that "if you have a park, nobody will want to spend time there anyway once it goes to shit!"
As a result, this article comes across as an unhinged conspiracy theory, when it's plainly true. I'm just not sure they're arguing against an idea that most people actually have. From my own perspective, it was remarkably impotent as propaganda.
This is decent entry article into the next steps towards social future without using the term 'Degrowth", which is a bit of a shame really as that would lead people to start researching elsewhere....
This is decent entry article into the next steps towards social future without using the term 'Degrowth", which is a bit of a shame really as that would lead people to start researching elsewhere.
Anyone who is interested in a bit more of a deep dive on this type of work should go and read "Jason Hickle: Less is More." The first 100ish pages will just make you belligerently angry (especially if you're British), but by the end you'll have a good notion of what MUST be done if mankind is to actually live decent lives not in service to a wealthy class.
Jacobin has been hostile to degrowth or eco-socialist ideas in favor of eco-modernist or purely class-based analysis. This reddit thread has some discussion about their opposition to it, along...
Jacobin has been hostile to degrowth or eco-socialist ideas in favor of eco-modernist or purely class-based analysis. This reddit thread has some discussion about their opposition to it, along with this one discussing one of Jacobin's more recent articles about degrowth. I thought this article linked by a commenter in the second thread offered a good critique of eco-modernism and presents its own interesting perspective. Personally, I can see the merits of both the degrowth/eco-socialist and eco-modernist schools of thought, though I lean more toward the degrowth approach.
Thinking about it a bit... a lot of problems are due to this idea that you can just own a specific chunk of earth. Having this chunk of earth flood (replenishing groundwater) is a terrible thing...
Thinking about it a bit... a lot of problems are due to this idea that you can just own a specific chunk of earth.
Having this chunk of earth flood (replenishing groundwater) is a terrible thing if its literally 95% of your assets and is now worthless. You have a stronger incentive to get everyone to work against the common good to avoid your own personal loss. And they'll roll with it to avoid their personal losses as well.
I think with the way the climate is changing, we need to rethink collective ownership as well as embrace nomadic migration. Being prepared to mass-displace millions with as little disruption as possible will serve us well.
This article, linked from the Jacobin article, cites examples from Ostrom, the researcher who disproved the inevitability of the Tragedy of the Commons. What's needed is more regulation and more...
This article, linked from the Jacobin article, cites examples from Ostrom, the researcher who disproved the inevitability of the Tragedy of the Commons.
What's needed is more regulation and more pressure on people/groups polluting our commons. Lets not forget that China is far and away still the worst global citizen in this regard.
How is China the worst global citizen when its per capita emissions are a fraction of the west’s? https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita
How is China the worst global citizen when its per capita emissions are a fraction of the west’s?
It's easy. You look at a pie chart of the worlds' emissions, see China having the biggest slice, and stop looking deeper into it. The data's right there, as long as you read it the right way.
It's easy. You look at a pie chart of the worlds' emissions, see China having the biggest slice, and stop looking deeper into it. The data's right there, as long as you read it the right way.
And to extend this: If you live in Australia, you can do the same thing for the USA (even though our per-capita emissions are some of the highest in the world). As our <negative sentiment>est...
And to extend this: If you live in Australia, you can do the same thing for the USA (even though our per-capita emissions are some of the highest in the world). As our <negative sentiment>est politicians say, we produce less than 1% of the world's emissions.
I'm sorry, I think I failed to fully convey my sarcasm. I was saying that people who argue that China is the "worst global citizen" in relation to climate change were taking a very surface level...
I'm sorry, I think I failed to fully convey my sarcasm. I was saying that people who argue that China is the "worst global citizen" in relation to climate change were taking a very surface level view of the statistics and don't actually look at any of the points you raise.
No worries. When so many people actually do take a surface view and stop looking, it can be easy to feel the need to try to inform even when it's not strictly needed.
No worries. When so many people actually do take a surface view and stop looking, it can be easy to feel the need to try to inform even when it's not strictly needed.
I think the planet doesn't care about per capita or not.....and it's patently obvious how much ecological damage China is willing to do with their infrastructure projects (or with overfishing...
I think the planet doesn't care about per capita or not.....and it's patently obvious how much ecological damage China is willing to do with their infrastructure projects (or with overfishing illegally in other countries waters), but even excluding that.....what is their real per capita emissions if you use their actual population and not their inflated official numbers?
Not adjusting for population is absurd though. What is the possible justification? Why do western people get a pass for emitting vastly more CO2 than Chinese people simply because they are...
Not adjusting for population is absurd though. What is the possible justification? Why do western people get a pass for emitting vastly more CO2 than Chinese people simply because they are distributed across multiple countries? This sounds like an excuse for western people to keep having incredibly high living standards while punishing Chinese people for being late to the party.
And there is absolutely no way the Chinese population is so inflated that it makes them a greater per capita emitter. Their population would have to be overstated by about 80% for that to happen which is just nonsensical.
I don't see the absurdity of it, China has a huge population and therefore as a country produces huge amounts of emissions, as it becomes more rich and develops, their emissions will increase, and...
I don't see the absurdity of it, China has a huge population and therefore as a country produces huge amounts of emissions, as it becomes more rich and develops, their emissions will increase, and you ignored my other points about ecological impact outside of just emissions. And of course this is all irrespective of their human rights violations.
I think China being a huge manufacturer of renewable energy is perhaps the saving grace on the horizon for their emissions. I don't care about whether you think this is West vs East or anything of that nature, trying to reduce it to that does no good, anthropogenic climate change doesn't make excuses simply because it's a lot of humans causing it, if we don't change things, we will all die.
The idea that an individual Chinese person, who is personally responsible for a small amount of emissions and has a low standard of living, should have a greater responsibility to reduce their...
The idea that an individual Chinese person, who is personally responsible for a small amount of emissions and has a low standard of living, should have a greater responsibility to reduce their emissions because they happen to live inside the borders of China than a western person who is personally responsible for much higher emissions, simply because the Chinese person has a lot of neighbours, is incoherent.
I ignored your other points because without actual metrics they really just seemed irrelevant to the discussion. Are they overfishing or otherwise exploiting the environment to a greater extent than other countries on a per-capita basis, or is this just another function of a large population?
I think you've actually found the real point....is it a fact that China's emissions are equally distributed across their population....or do they have a wealthy class that is responsible for the...
I think you've actually found the real point....is it a fact that China's emissions are equally distributed across their population....or do they have a wealthy class that is responsible for the lion's share of their total emissions? If we were to subset their population to the US population, starting with their worst emissions individuals, do you think for that subset they would have a higher or lower emissions per capita? I think it's ridiculous to use the exact people you're talking about, the poor majority Chinese, to excuse the emissions problems their country has, by handwaving it away as per capita.
To turn your argument against itself: I think the planet doesn’t care about arbitrary land/governance borders… and it’s patently obvious how much ecological damage the wealthiest individuals are...
To turn your argument against itself: I think the planet doesn’t care about arbitrary land/governance borders… and it’s patently obvious how much ecological damage the wealthiest individuals are contributing to with their disproportionate resource consumption across the entire surface of the planet regardless of physical proximity to each other.
If China was to annex every country between itself and the border to France, of course its total output would look gargantuan — likewise if China happened to fracture like the Soviet Union into a dozen smaller countries with populations of 100 million people each, then your argument of “who is the biggest (overall) emitter of carbon (without adjusting for population)” suddenly makes the formerly Chinese state a non-issue.
So one guy claims China is inflating its numbers. With his estimate of 1.28 billon instead of 1.41 billion. But the UN (generally a more reputable source than a single rando) puts estimates at...
Fuxian Yi, senior scientist in the obstetrics and gynecology department at the University of Wisconsin, said he estimated that China’s 2020 population was 1.28 billion rather than the 1.41 billion census number reported and that fertility rates were lower than reported.
So one guy claims China is inflating its numbers. With his estimate of 1.28 billon instead of 1.41 billion.
But the UN (generally a more reputable source than a single rando) puts estimates at 1.46 billion a bit later.
Either way, per-captia India and China are not doing that bad, all things considered. We all need to work together, I'm not saying its a free pass. But unless the USA and Europe are willing to drop to India/China levels of poverty, perhaps we need to have a meaningful discussion on working to both fixing global inequality and reducing emissions.
We should also ask "How much of China's emissions is due to manufacturing goods for the West?" Because the blame for that should be at least a little bit split.
Also quality of life. I'd expect the richest countries in the world to be reigning in well before we start demanding those still on the lower rungs of the luxury ladder to give up for the common good.
Also quality of life. I'd expect the richest countries in the world to be reigning in well before we start demanding those still on the lower rungs of the luxury ladder to give up for the common good.
Also cumulative totals. I don't think China deserves a free pass by any means but it's pretty obvious that the US currently benefits from a long history of unregulated high emissions...
Also cumulative totals. I don't think China deserves a free pass by any means but it's pretty obvious that the US currently benefits from a long history of unregulated high emissions industrialization in a way that China doesn't.
No, because those are the only numbers that are fair to consider. It’s ridiculous to demand that people who aren’t using many resources curtail their resource usage to a greater degree than others...
No, because those are the only numbers that are fair to consider. It’s ridiculous to demand that people who aren’t using many resources curtail their resource usage to a greater degree than others who are abusing those same resources.
Like, say John eats 10 cookies per day, but Joe and Nancy eat a combined 12 cookies per day. One day it turns out there are only 20 cookies available. Should Joe and Nancy only eat 10 cookies between them now (getting 5 cookies each) because Joe and Nancy used to jointly eat more than Joe? After all, John is used to eating 10 cookies, and let’s face it, Joe and Nancy are Chinese so they should just suck it up.
Reductionist argument. Industry produces the vast majority of pollutants, not individual citizens. Per capita arguments don't even come close to telling the whole story. A lot of folks here seem...
Reductionist argument. Industry produces the vast majority of pollutants, not individual citizens. Per capita arguments don't even come close to telling the whole story.
A lot of folks here seem awfully attached to that same argument. Are you comparing individual energy use or defending China's worsening environmental impact in the world with smokescreens?
Yeah, industry that pays wages and provides goods and electricity, resulting in their quality of life improving. The Chinese people have a lower quality of life than westerners, and quality of...
Yeah, industry that pays wages and provides goods and electricity, resulting in their quality of life improving. The Chinese people have a lower quality of life than westerners, and quality of life is correlated strongly with using, among other things, fossil fuels. It’s unfair to demand that they forego the standard of living that we enjoy because invisible lines on the planet happen to encircle 1.4 billion of them and only 37 million of us (in Canada, YMMV).
Are you comparing individual energy use or defending China's worsening environmental impact in the world with smokescreens?
It’s unclear what I’m being accused of here, but it sounds less like an argument and more like a personal attack.
China is the world’s manufacturing base though. A lot of that CO2 reduction is just moving the emissions to China’s ledger instead of the developed world’s, because someone still needs to consume...
China is the world’s manufacturing base though. A lot of that CO2 reduction is just moving the emissions to China’s ledger instead of the developed world’s, because someone still needs to consume the fuel to make the stuff.
Because sustainable energy production isn't there yet to handle industrial-scale loads. For all the talk about how much cheaper per GWh wind/solar is now, they don't talk much about how many GWh...
Because sustainable energy production isn't there yet to handle industrial-scale loads. For all the talk about how much cheaper per GWh wind/solar is now, they don't talk much about how many GWh actually comes out for a given peak capacity.
A 1.6 GW offshore wind farm (the largest in the world) produces 1/5th the power of a 1.6 GW nuclear plant annually. Or about the amount of a small coal plant.
To replace the 4 largest coal plants in China, we need about 23 GW total peak capacity... which on paper is building 15 of the largest offshore wind farms in the world. But then to get the actual output needed annually, you not only need some massive storage capacity, but you'll need about 5x those plants to meet the total GWh needed and not just peak output. So that means you need to build 75 of the largest offshore wind farms in the world to replace 4 coal plants.
Nuclear is an option, really the main option to scale quickly, but for some reason you see a lot of propaganda against it still.
China will likely have a larger percentage of its grid from renewables than the US. They're tracking to get to ~50% from fossil fuels by 2040 while the US is currently sitting at around 65%....
China will likely have a larger percentage of its grid from renewables than the US. They're tracking to get to ~50% from fossil fuels by 2040 while the US is currently sitting at around 65%. Basically all new electricity generation infrastructure in China now is either nuclear, some other renewable. The 3 Gorges Dam, for example, was built primarily for hydroelectricity.
Biden's Inflation Reduction Act might address the gap and supercharge the US' investment and growth in renewables but it's unclear how long it will take us to get any of it online. We use a lot less coal than we used to, which is good. But most of it has been replaced by natural gas rather than renewables. Natural gas is better in terms of pollution, but not much better in terms of emissions.
If China suffers a major economic contraction that might change things as well as they will require less power, and fossil fuel based plants are easier to scale down as demand decreases. But by the same token they might stop building more energy production capacity, which will mean the older plants persist for longer instead of being decommissioned.
I also really really want to be hopeful but even in such dire circumstances where the literal future of our society is at stake we still have to constantly fight parasites:...
Biden's Inflation Reduction Act might address the gap and supercharge the US' investment and growth in renewables but it's unclear how long it will take us to get any of it online.
I'm increasingly starting to believe that short of a green party president that declares a national state of emergency and uses eminent domain to force through infrastructure, permits be damned, or the military stepping in, things will continue as they have for decades past: the rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer, the earth will get warmer, and we will disproportionately allocate the ill effects of climate change to the poor.
I really really hope I'm wrong. There is an anger brewing about our society's climate response that goes beyond words, I'm just worried it won't be directed correctly, and will be undermined and crippled by the parasites that got us here.
Are we seeing the same data? They don't appear to be "a fraction of the west's" to me, even when you adjust for exports and imports, China is higher or equal compared to most of Europe, and...
Are we seeing the same data? They don't appear to be "a fraction of the west's" to me, even when you adjust for exports and imports, China is higher or equal compared to most of Europe, and trending upwards as opposed to downwards
I'm far from an expert on this topic. But it seems to me that this article is criticising the history of the tragedy of the commons, and extending that criticism (with insufficient justification, in my opinion) to the correctness of the concept, and then making policy recommendations on that basis.
Apparently the person who popularised the concept was a white nationalist eugenicist, and the history of the "shared pastures" metaphor was rooted in oppression. That's all definitely bad. But I don't see how this rebuts what I think is the core claim of the tragedy of the commons: that when incentives are structured in a way that allows large negative externalities, each individual is incentivised to act in a way such that the collective is worse off.
The article claims that Elinor Ostrom debunks the tragedy of the commons. Her Nobel Prize-winning work studied local communities which had developed their own system for managing the commons. From another article linked by the Jacobin article:
This reads to me as proposing a different incentive structure which correctly aligns individual and collective interests, which is not so much a rebuttal of the tragedy of the commons as a rebuttal of the specific claim that "privatisation is the only solution to the tragedy".
Furthermore, it's not clear to me that Ostrom's incentive structure can be applied to the "loss of our groundwater, clean air, wetlands, and forests". I don't see many of her features (from the quote above) applying to these. To me, it seems that the tragedy of the commons is fully at play in these cases.
More subjectively, it feels to me that this article is a reaction to conservatives using the tragedy of the commons to "[assert] that we all share blame for warming the planet" (and therefore that corporations deserve no blame), and the claim that "[i]nevitability excuses us from struggle" (and therefore that climate action is unnecessary). To be clear, I disagree with conservatives that the tragedy of the commons implies either of these things.
But the Jacobin article's particular reaction seems to be to throw out the whole concept of the "tragedy of the commons" along with the bathwater. This seems sad to me, because I think that the concept correctly models climate change: any solution to the climate crisis must align individual incentives and the the collective interest, if it wants to last any amount of time. Carbon credits and ESG seem to be baby steps in that direction, although they have their own problems.
Without aligning incentives, I don't think it matters how many Shell CEOs you eat, because another one will just step up to the plate.
On a side note, I found myself a little disturbed by the reporting in this article.
I had not heard of Garrett Hardin before this article, but I read about him while doing my due diligence into it. Regarding Hardin's death, the Jacobin article writes:
I found the above description an unnecessary and frankly cruel jab at his death, considering the real circumstances seem to be that he was 88 years old and in poor health, while his wife was 81 with ALS, and their deaths were in keeping with their belief in assisted suicide.
Furthermore, it seems that reducing him to a "eugenicist and white nationalist" with a "very specific political agenda" is at least somewhat misleading, because:
Between the article's reductive take on Hardin, and its claims that the tragedy of the commons is "vociferously refuted", "discredited", and a "myth" (which I disagree with, as explained above), I can't say that this article gave me a lot of confidence in the reporting by this author or by Jacobin.
Eugenicists are not intrinsically anti-abortion.
If you are in favor of population-control and anti-immigration in the USA, you are at least a bit of a white supremacist....Especially back in his formative years where the population was much whiter than it is today.
You're saying the white-dominant society has the right to remain wealthier, and that keeping out "undesirables" is a valid way to do that.
That seems reasonable, although I also don't remember seeing anything suggesting he held anything like the more extreme forms of white nationalism that seems unfortunately common today.
Maybe I should have been clearer though --- I am aware that Hardin held some beliefs that I disagree with today. My specific issue is that the article originally left me with the impression that Hardin was some kind of delusional hard-right nutjob whom I should disagree with about everything. So, when I later found out that the reality seemed much more nuanced, I felt manipulated and lied to.
Minor note: I feel a bit uncomfortable seeing the third-person pronoun "you" being used in your comment in relation to beliefs which I do not hold.
I know the "you" thing is problematic conversationally, but it is really hard to force myself to always use the abstracted "one" all the time because it makes sentences flow even more confusingly IMO.
That's fair, and I agree there's no perfect solution for this. It's also not my place to prescribe what words anyone should or should not use. But I personally try to use something more like "If a person... then they..." and "That would be saying..."
I try to stick to more neutral language especially when talking about sensitive or political issues, where people seem to more readily take things personally.
This "you" problem feels like a glitch in English. Using "you" as a third person pronoun just sounds better to my ears. I use it constantly in writing and 99% of the time it's not in reference to actual positions of the person I'm talking to but rather as a way to set the table for whatever argument I'm aiming for.
The problem is a large number of people are fundamentally incapable of receiving it in the way you are intending and respond as though they are being personally attacked.
There was a reason I threw the qualifier "In the USA." Racism is especially bad here. Like many criminal statues, almost all immigration controls in the USA have severely racist over or undertones, depending on the year it was passed. Naturalization for whites only. Rejecting undesirables, where that meant Asians. That slowly shifted focus to Muslims and Hispanics in my lifetime. "Secure the Border" is code for "Keep the Mexicans out."
Substitute racist with classist and the arguement translates worldwide with little problem. The only reason to restrict immigration is because you don't want others to have access to what you have. And thats pretty damn supremacist now matter the race.
That’s a bit reductionist, isn’t it? I’m pretty pro-immigration, and I’m strongly anti-nationalist, but even I can see that absolutely unlimited immigration policies would be problematic.
Howso? I'd agree that perhaps going from today's status quo to nothing instantly would be a problem. The same way that hitting a small website with a million requests at once can.
But gradually phasing out limits over the course of 10-20 years? There's no reason that couldn't be easily achieved. And once the limits are no longer in place, mass migration is unlikely to be a thing outside of emergencies. Which is kind of the most important time to facilitate it.
The USA is a defacto group of 50 countries with open borders between them. And you don't hear too many stories about Kansas being overrun with people fleeing California en mass.
I and many friends would probably emmigrate to Europe if it was as easy as moving between states, which basically just involves giving proof of residence and turning in your old ID for new ID. And I'm sure plenty of Europeans would love to do the reverse (ok maybe not since 2016 but you know).
The issue as I see it is there are pretty widely varying ideas of how a society should operate, and my ideas are not necessarily dominant in the rest of the world.
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2021/12/07/global-public-opinion-in-an-era-of-democratic-anxiety/
For instance,
I would be comfortable living in any of some 50-60 countries in the world. I would not even entertain the idea of living in most of the others, where the prevailing ideas about at least one of gender equality, tolerance of religion, democracy, and LGBT-acceptance are intolerably poor.
Correspondingly, I would not like my home to dramatically shift to become more similar to any of those regions where I would not choose to live.
Despite what we perceive as differences between the cultures of Kansas and California, ultimately they are almost indistinguishable compared to, for instance, the Middle East or most of Asia.
I’m skeptical that our current immigration levels constitute a threat to democracy here in Canada, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think there isn’t some upper bound where our small population of 37 million people couldn’t be completely subsumed by the global average, and currently I see the global average as being fairly bad judging by the world value survey.
https://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/WVSContents.jsp
Edit: you edited your comment to talk about allowing unlimited migration between Europe and (I assume) America. Those are highly similar western democracies — is that what you mean by unlimited migration, rather than the entire world?
Nope, entire world. Democracy would sort these problems out eventually.
I'm seriously doubting people are going to up and abandon their homes, friends, and family unless they're immensely dissatisified with the regieme they're under. Which to me says they'd be less likely to copy the policies of their old home.
If you're LGBT living in America, are you going to emmigrate to Alabama, even though you can? Are Alabamins chomping at the bit to move to New Jersey and displace the libs?
If half of LA democrats up and moved to Wyoming, they could flip the state blue. Why haven't they? It would certainly be in their best interest to override the local culture there.
No, because it's preposterous to presume everyone whom wants to make everywhere like their homeland will leave their homeland.
The majority of immigrants are economic migrants, not political refugees.
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-canadas-immigration-policy
Well. In the USA, my parents were born at a time (the 1960s) when when the official policy of the US government was to deny government-backed loans to black people.
A good bit of the racial wealth gap in the USA is due in part to these policies. You can see where the lines were drawn to this day by walking the neighborhoods.
Do aussies make cartoons like this for their kids?
I'm aware of religious-based caste systems else where. And there's plenty of that going around in the USA as well. There's a very large contingent of people whom think disbelief in God should be grounds for banning from public office.
Here's a video of one of our congresswoman joking about a muslim congresswoman being a suicide bomber.
Here's an incomplete list of anti-black sentiments on one of the largest news networks in the nation...during black history month.
This is anecdotal so take it with a grain of salt. I'm also going to post a second piece with context as a top level comment because I think it gives the same message as the Jacobin piece with a less aggressive writing style. Also, for context I'm a white man and this is about to be a long comment.
I first read tragedy of the commons as part of my masters in Coastal Science and Policy. It was the first paper assigned in a class of Social Ecological Systems. I went home and read the paper, which is honestly quite short if anyone is interested, and fell in love with the succinct concept. I returned to class the following day to discuss all of the merits I found with it. I am so happy I wasn't chosen to kick off the discussion because everyone else had found the article sexist, racist and generally not worth the paper it was printed on. No one had been prompted to read it that way, we hadn't had any context we were just given the article. We were a diverse cohort from 8 countries and a fair spread of men and women. I was floored.
The general consensus was it was racist because it undermined and infantilized indigenous/local communities who had by and large managed their resources adequately. It's an easy way to call for external governance of localized resources even though that tends to have been the source of the issue (i.e. depletion of fish stocks usually followed the arrival of national or international level commercial fishing operations, not community level or artisanal ones.). This gets into ideas like "The Brazilian's can't adequately preserve their rainforest so we must go in and manage it for them" or better yet, turn first nation land in British Colombia into federal leases and give Canfor Corp control of the forests.
I originally didn't give this much credence and still thought the article had merits. A week later we attended a presentation by the Chief Scientist of the Nature Conservancy, who at the time was Hugh Possingham, which was held at the university and was open to the public. A number of times audience members from the community would claim that the biggest threat to nature was in fact the impending population boom in Africa and how that would take up our resources and ruin our planet. In response, Hugh lauded the birth control programs the Nature Conservancy had deployed across the continent. To this one of the students from our program stood up and admonished the racist statement. She said that Africa's impact on the climate crisis is next to nothing (current numbers state that while comprising about 17 percent of the world's population, Africa contributes just 4 percent of global carbon emissions) and that it was an easy, racist scapegoat against actual change here. That was a solid point. While it was predicated on thinking like Hardin's, the statement didn't hold much water. While I still struggled to see how tragedy of the commons was racist, that was a decent example.
I also didn't understand how it was sexist. A big part of the discussion we had in class was on reproductive rights. This was justification for limiting the reproductive rights of women, similar to what was rolled out in China in the 80/90s. They also argued for the intersection with gender roles and placing the burden of resource management on women. Now please grant me some grace as it's been nearly 7 years since I had those discussions so not everything is so crisp, but I will say that I came away pretty convinced.
I was wrestling with all of this so much that when Tragedy of the Commons came up organically 2 years later with a friend I really respected and looked up to I asked him why many folks saw it this way. His response was equally shocking. He had actually written a book called "License to Breed" though he had never published it out of fear for reprisal. He loved Hardin's ideas and took it a step further saying you should only be able to procreate after meeting preset monetary, education, and physical requirements. "Oh no," I thought "That sounds a lot like eugenics". A very awkward conversation proceeded and honestly that was the discussion that finally convinced me that Tragedy of the Commons is a justification of ideas like eugenics and supremacy, not the authors beliefs.
So this is a very round about way of saying I understand that the theory as an idea seems sound, but if you start looking at how it's applied and the outcomes of its message it get problematic pretty quickly. It took a long personal journey to get to that conclusion but I did arrive to a place similar to the author of the Jacobin piece.
You know, I'm always reminded of this very recent article about how fucked we are because even judges are doing this:
I've been in Australia long enough to know that white collar crimes here are barely punished. There are plenty of examples of executives here stealing millions but judges being very lenient towards them.
There are no incentives but that of money. No self-interest like that of NIMBY (Not In My Backyard). And no one in a powerful position but crooked kings and judges as described in The Book.
Marx is an eugenicist? Because I'm pretty sure I read about it in his book. And that would presumably predate Hardin. Nevermind that I'm pretty sure that is an argument for placing the concept in the political left.
Plato mentored Aristotle.
The environment is like a perfect example of a tragedy of the commons. No one person, company or country, noticeably benefits from reducing their own pollution output. Everyone else will continue polluting and our sole actor will probably suffer loss of profit, time or energy.
I'm not even sure how that's a right wing concept since the message becomes that shared resources need rules or agreements in place to prevent them from being abused.
While I agree with the Jacobin article, I'm not sure I would if I didn't have a larger context on the Hardin debate, particularly in regards to the climate crisis. I suggest folks that are upset by this article read Brett Frischmann's piece from Scientific American "The Tragedy of the Commons, Revisited", and if that speaks to you, learn more about Elinor Ostrom and her Social-Ecological Systems. I still have a number of her papers and
Key take aways:
Happy to share more on Ostrom if anyone is interested. I still have the PDFs of a number of her works.
Huh. This line alone fundamentally changes my understanding of the term - as a layman I’ve always heard it used as pretty much just a shorthand for the situation where everyone’s rational self interest causes a system as a whole to collapse, not at all in the context of a specific sociological paper and certainly not as something that hinged on a formal definition of “commons”.
Honestly I think the general understanding of the term may well be so blurred as to undermine the original meaning, because I’d expect the vast majority of people who hear or use it to be thinking of what’s described as open access there, rather than specifically thinking of that form of community governance and/or referencing the particular academic study that the phrase originated from. I don’t really know if there’s anything we can or should do in light of that gap in understanding, but it does at least seem useful to acknowledge.
Yeah, now I know about "the commons", but as a child, it was primarily a phrase used in this precise context. And the way kids smush things together in their heads, it formed some amalgam of "common interests" overlaid the ideal public space, and became about the first ideas of coordination itself. As in, "the tragedy of the commons" is when nobody takes the time to ask "hey, did you want that?" before trodding on it, and that it's a sort of dynamic system of social failure, not that "if you have a park, nobody will want to spend time there anyway once it goes to shit!"
As a result, this article comes across as an unhinged conspiracy theory, when it's plainly true. I'm just not sure they're arguing against an idea that most people actually have. From my own perspective, it was remarkably impotent as propaganda.
This is decent entry article into the next steps towards social future without using the term 'Degrowth", which is a bit of a shame really as that would lead people to start researching elsewhere.
Anyone who is interested in a bit more of a deep dive on this type of work should go and read "Jason Hickle: Less is More." The first 100ish pages will just make you belligerently angry (especially if you're British), but by the end you'll have a good notion of what MUST be done if mankind is to actually live decent lives not in service to a wealthy class.
Jacobin has been hostile to degrowth or eco-socialist ideas in favor of eco-modernist or purely class-based analysis. This reddit thread has some discussion about their opposition to it, along with this one discussing one of Jacobin's more recent articles about degrowth. I thought this article linked by a commenter in the second thread offered a good critique of eco-modernism and presents its own interesting perspective. Personally, I can see the merits of both the degrowth/eco-socialist and eco-modernist schools of thought, though I lean more toward the degrowth approach.
Thinking about it a bit... a lot of problems are due to this idea that you can just own a specific chunk of earth.
Having this chunk of earth flood (replenishing groundwater) is a terrible thing if its literally 95% of your assets and is now worthless. You have a stronger incentive to get everyone to work against the common good to avoid your own personal loss. And they'll roll with it to avoid their personal losses as well.
I think with the way the climate is changing, we need to rethink collective ownership as well as embrace nomadic migration. Being prepared to mass-displace millions with as little disruption as possible will serve us well.
This article, linked from the Jacobin article, cites examples from Ostrom, the researcher who disproved the inevitability of the Tragedy of the Commons.
What's needed is more regulation and more pressure on people/groups polluting our commons. Lets not forget that China is far and away still the worst global citizen in this regard.
How is China the worst global citizen when its per capita emissions are a fraction of the west’s?
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/co-emissions-per-capita
It's easy. You look at a pie chart of the worlds' emissions, see China having the biggest slice, and stop looking deeper into it. The data's right there, as long as you read it the right way.
And to extend this: If you live in Australia, you can do the same thing for the USA (even though our per-capita emissions are some of the highest in the world). As our <negative sentiment>est politicians say, we produce less than 1% of the world's emissions.
[edit: totally misread the above post]
I'm sorry, I think I failed to fully convey my sarcasm. I was saying that people who argue that China is the "worst global citizen" in relation to climate change were taking a very surface level view of the statistics and don't actually look at any of the points you raise.
No I'm sorry I think I pressed "post" a little prematurely. I'm so sorry for misreading your post, I can only plead that I am very sleepy today :(
No worries. When so many people actually do take a surface view and stop looking, it can be easy to feel the need to try to inform even when it's not strictly needed.
I think the planet doesn't care about per capita or not.....and it's patently obvious how much ecological damage China is willing to do with their infrastructure projects (or with overfishing illegally in other countries waters), but even excluding that.....what is their real per capita emissions if you use their actual population and not their inflated official numbers?
Not adjusting for population is absurd though. What is the possible justification? Why do western people get a pass for emitting vastly more CO2 than Chinese people simply because they are distributed across multiple countries? This sounds like an excuse for western people to keep having incredibly high living standards while punishing Chinese people for being late to the party.
And there is absolutely no way the Chinese population is so inflated that it makes them a greater per capita emitter. Their population would have to be overstated by about 80% for that to happen which is just nonsensical.
I don't see the absurdity of it, China has a huge population and therefore as a country produces huge amounts of emissions, as it becomes more rich and develops, their emissions will increase, and you ignored my other points about ecological impact outside of just emissions. And of course this is all irrespective of their human rights violations.
I think China being a huge manufacturer of renewable energy is perhaps the saving grace on the horizon for their emissions. I don't care about whether you think this is West vs East or anything of that nature, trying to reduce it to that does no good, anthropogenic climate change doesn't make excuses simply because it's a lot of humans causing it, if we don't change things, we will all die.
The idea that an individual Chinese person, who is personally responsible for a small amount of emissions and has a low standard of living, should have a greater responsibility to reduce their emissions because they happen to live inside the borders of China than a western person who is personally responsible for much higher emissions, simply because the Chinese person has a lot of neighbours, is incoherent.
I ignored your other points because without actual metrics they really just seemed irrelevant to the discussion. Are they overfishing or otherwise exploiting the environment to a greater extent than other countries on a per-capita basis, or is this just another function of a large population?
I think you've actually found the real point....is it a fact that China's emissions are equally distributed across their population....or do they have a wealthy class that is responsible for the lion's share of their total emissions? If we were to subset their population to the US population, starting with their worst emissions individuals, do you think for that subset they would have a higher or lower emissions per capita? I think it's ridiculous to use the exact people you're talking about, the poor majority Chinese, to excuse the emissions problems their country has, by handwaving it away as per capita.
I think without hard numbers this discussion is veering off into unsupportable speculation.
To turn your argument against itself: I think the planet doesn’t care about arbitrary land/governance borders… and it’s patently obvious how much ecological damage the wealthiest individuals are contributing to with their disproportionate resource consumption across the entire surface of the planet regardless of physical proximity to each other.
If China was to annex every country between itself and the border to France, of course its total output would look gargantuan — likewise if China happened to fracture like the Soviet Union into a dozen smaller countries with populations of 100 million people each, then your argument of “who is the biggest (overall) emitter of carbon (without adjusting for population)” suddenly makes the formerly Chinese state a non-issue.
So one guy claims China is inflating its numbers. With his estimate of 1.28 billon instead of 1.41 billion.
But the UN (generally a more reputable source than a single rando) puts estimates at 1.46 billion a bit later.
Either way, per-captia India and China are not doing that bad, all things considered. We all need to work together, I'm not saying its a free pass. But unless the USA and Europe are willing to drop to India/China levels of poverty, perhaps we need to have a meaningful discussion on working to both fixing global inequality and reducing emissions.
We should also ask "How much of China's emissions is due to manufacturing goods for the West?" Because the blame for that should be at least a little bit split.
This is how
The US is headed in the right direction on CO2 pollution: down. China is not.
Isn’t it kind of just ridiculous to look at non population adjusted numbers though?
Also quality of life. I'd expect the richest countries in the world to be reigning in well before we start demanding those still on the lower rungs of the luxury ladder to give up for the common good.
Also cumulative totals. I don't think China deserves a free pass by any means but it's pretty obvious that the US currently benefits from a long history of unregulated high emissions industrialization in a way that China doesn't.
Isn't it kind of just ridiculous to look at only population adjusted numbers though?
No, because those are the only numbers that are fair to consider. It’s ridiculous to demand that people who aren’t using many resources curtail their resource usage to a greater degree than others who are abusing those same resources.
Like, say John eats 10 cookies per day, but Joe and Nancy eat a combined 12 cookies per day. One day it turns out there are only 20 cookies available. Should Joe and Nancy only eat 10 cookies between them now (getting 5 cookies each) because Joe and Nancy used to jointly eat more than Joe? After all, John is used to eating 10 cookies, and let’s face it, Joe and Nancy are Chinese so they should just suck it up.
Really, this is the kind of basic fairness that is wired directly into our DNA, at a point early enough in our development that monkeys share it.
Reductionist argument. Industry produces the vast majority of pollutants, not individual citizens. Per capita arguments don't even come close to telling the whole story.
A lot of folks here seem awfully attached to that same argument. Are you comparing individual energy use or defending China's worsening environmental impact in the world with smokescreens?
Yeah, industry that pays wages and provides goods and electricity, resulting in their quality of life improving. The Chinese people have a lower quality of life than westerners, and quality of life is correlated strongly with using, among other things, fossil fuels. It’s unfair to demand that they forego the standard of living that we enjoy because invisible lines on the planet happen to encircle 1.4 billion of them and only 37 million of us (in Canada, YMMV).
It’s unclear what I’m being accused of here, but it sounds less like an argument and more like a personal attack.
China is the world’s manufacturing base though. A lot of that CO2 reduction is just moving the emissions to China’s ledger instead of the developed world’s, because someone still needs to consume the fuel to make the stuff.
Aren't you forgetting about all manner of sustainable energy production there?
Because sustainable energy production isn't there yet to handle industrial-scale loads. For all the talk about how much cheaper per GWh wind/solar is now, they don't talk much about how many GWh actually comes out for a given peak capacity.
A 1.6 GW offshore wind farm (the largest in the world) produces 1/5th the power of a 1.6 GW nuclear plant annually. Or about the amount of a small coal plant.
To replace the 4 largest coal plants in China, we need about 23 GW total peak capacity... which on paper is building 15 of the largest offshore wind farms in the world. But then to get the actual output needed annually, you not only need some massive storage capacity, but you'll need about 5x those plants to meet the total GWh needed and not just peak output. So that means you need to build 75 of the largest offshore wind farms in the world to replace 4 coal plants.
Nuclear is an option, really the main option to scale quickly, but for some reason you see a lot of propaganda against it still.
China will likely have a larger percentage of its grid from renewables than the US. They're tracking to get to ~50% from fossil fuels by 2040 while the US is currently sitting at around 65%. Basically all new electricity generation infrastructure in China now is either nuclear, some other renewable. The 3 Gorges Dam, for example, was built primarily for hydroelectricity.
Biden's Inflation Reduction Act might address the gap and supercharge the US' investment and growth in renewables but it's unclear how long it will take us to get any of it online. We use a lot less coal than we used to, which is good. But most of it has been replaced by natural gas rather than renewables. Natural gas is better in terms of pollution, but not much better in terms of emissions.
If China suffers a major economic contraction that might change things as well as they will require less power, and fossil fuel based plants are easier to scale down as demand decreases. But by the same token they might stop building more energy production capacity, which will mean the older plants persist for longer instead of being decommissioned.
I also really really want to be hopeful but even in such dire circumstances where the literal future of our society is at stake we still have to constantly fight parasites: https://fxtwitter.com/leee_harris/status/1713910875550314767
I'm increasingly starting to believe that short of a green party president that declares a national state of emergency and uses eminent domain to force through infrastructure, permits be damned, or the military stepping in, things will continue as they have for decades past: the rich will get richer, the poor will get poorer, the earth will get warmer, and we will disproportionately allocate the ill effects of climate change to the poor.
I really really hope I'm wrong. There is an anger brewing about our society's climate response that goes beyond words, I'm just worried it won't be directed correctly, and will be undermined and crippled by the parasites that got us here.
Are we seeing the same data? They don't appear to be "a fraction of the west's" to me, even when you adjust for exports and imports, China is higher or equal compared to most of Europe, and trending upwards as opposed to downwards